In New Haven: savoring the warmth of… (2)

I’m on the East Coast, I can tell. This morning, I’m looking outside the apartment window and through the wet, splattered glass I see this:





Warm breezes, hot afternoons, scorching rides on Mr. B where are you?
Savoring the warmth… but of what? Oh, easy. This, for example:



...with fresh, poached peaches and raspberry maple syrup

We’re walking against the wind, my daughter and I, huddled under an umbrella. One latte and three pancakes later and I no longer mind the gusts, the rain, the East Coast bad weather blitz.

I come here so often, that I sometimes forget to look up. And Yale, mocked by those whose airs are all about being anti-airs, is indeed very pretty when you look up, especially in this season of very red leaves.




I have work to do today. And a drive to Hartford. The afternoon is gone.

Both daughters are here now. Screw the weather, we are on an Asian food roll. Last night Japanese, today Malaysian.

Besides, street lights look pretty against a wet windshield.




Wet pavements, umbrellas put to work, pant cuffs dragging in puddles. It’s hard to care. Warm foods, spicy dips, good coffee. And a fried banana, drizzled with chocolate.

In New Haven: savoring the warmth of...

A daughter, living here, in New Haven, comes around the corner. She takes my breath away. How can a child of mine be so disarmingly poised, so much in the adult world already? She is five weeks older than when I last saw her. I am five weeks older too. I am brimming with questions. And stories. I am afraid I will monopolize the conversation.

We walk down to Miso. Sushi is an art here. [Even more importantly, it is fresh and honest.]

Next to us, at a long table, a dozen or so Japanese men are engaged in a lively debate over… I don’t know what. I am always at a loss around their language. But it is a welcome exuberance. We are insignificant next to it. We lose ourselves in our food and in each other.

It is late. The wine bottle has been studied and tested repeatedly for any last remaining drops. There haven’t been any for a while. A sip of tea and a last shared plate of food. The ultimate comfort food: a warm, drizzled with chocolate and sprinkled with almonds, fried banana.

From NYC: after the museum, the real thing

Afternoon: I am in New York, idling away a few hours. I hike over to the Whitney Museum of American Art on 75th. I’m getting lazy. A suitcase to pull, a computer to carry. I get on the Madison Avenue bus. I don’t have enough quarters. I get off the Madison Avenue bus.

More blocks. I’m there. I want to see a special exhibit of photographs. Theme: Sub/urbia, the new city. Kind of strange to look for that in New York after having (gladly) moved from the suburbs this summer. In order to get closer to downtown Madison. Life is strange.

The exhibit is good. For example:



sub-urbia on display


But it takes only ten minutes to view it and I have paid $12 to be here. No matter, there’s always Edward Hopper.


looking at a Hopper, looking like a Hopper



The trouble is, once you have seen a roomful of Edward Hoppers, you begin to see Hopper-esque scenes everywhere. I take a cab to Grand Central, go down and find the train for New Haven.


a woman waits at the train station



commuter train: going home



private thoughts

whirly-midnight-wind

Embarrassing words of the day (uttered by me): excuse me, dinner party hosts? I need to go home to blog.
Kind words of the day (uttered by hosts): we understand.

4:30 a.m. wake up, hit the computer, read a few things. No inspiration. Too bad, hang up the key board, move on.

8:30 a.m. meeting number one.
Followed by: family law class (most likely, they were thinking: are you a math crazy person or what? Can you slow down with those child support calculations, please?).
Followed by: adorable Torts class (most likely they were thinking: if she moves through three cases today again, there will be bloodshed and a revolution, right here on the fifth floor of the Law School).
It’s afternoon. Many important emails to attend to.
I’m exhausted.

(recent email): You want to go with me on Thursday to get some cider? These farmers have the best cider on the Saturday market (Green’s Orchard). And they’re pressing fresh cider that afternoon.
Okay. I’m all about field to table.

You are so driving in a circuitous fashion.
Yeah, I know you like to take photos…



scared?



at peace



pressing cider: a noisy operation



apples and orange


Listen, I am so late, I need to go, I need to go… Pinhead is cooking a meal and he is a spectacular cook…



morbier cheese and elephant garlic which, as it turns out, is closer to a leek than to a clove of garlic



wrapped in bacon and perfectly done



sinful


So, understand. Some days, it is nearly impossible to fit in the blogging. You can, however, try. If you’re out and about, you say this: please, it’s a Cinderella thing. I need to go home to blog. They’ll understand. Give ‘em a link to your site if you haven’t done so already. Then zip home. Maybe you’ll make it in time. I did. But just barely.

Obsession

I woke up in the middle of the night, once, twice, got up, returned to bed, got up again, each time thinking about grapes.

Grapes, at the outdoor markets of Vienna, plump grapes, yellow Muscats, green, red varieties, the kind that when you take a bite, the juice squirts in your mouth, the skin recedes, the flesh melts into sweetness.

Grapes, one strand taken by me from someone’s fridge early on Tuesday, stealthily, then openly. Delicious, firm, irresistible so that I ate them almost instantly.

A friend (is it okay that I call you that?) asked me to go apple buying next week, over at a nearby orchard. Sure, I said. Apples. It is the season. Still, the grapes remained there, firmly wedged in my mind.

I retrieved one photo from this Saturday, I studied it but could make no improvements. It shows them off as they are – plump, perfect.




This morning I am hoping to fill my head with competing images. I need to do my presentation downtown, I’ll walk up and down the streets of this neighborhood, surely I will pay attention to the colors of fall, to the pumpkins on doorsteps, surely I will focus on life around me.

I don’t think so. I am destined today to again return to images of grapes. I can tell.

[Is this post really about grapes? Oh yes. Though you could well substitute the word grapes for your favorite obsession and it would probably work.]

Back in Madison? almost almost but not quite and not for long

When you make connections in any of the European cities, you feel like the great capitals are swirling around you, reeling in and out of your space, tantalizing you, then retreating. I'm traveling from Vienna, connecting through Paris, listening to someone talk about their stay in Prague, another making references to some food she had eaten in Rome.

How interesting it would be to European-airport hop in a day or so and just take in that much of a city – the layover minutes!

Even those suck you into that country's habits in some small way. At the moment, you have to really really love those brief moments of Parisian air to route yourself through Charles de Gaulle in making European connections. With construction, not nearly enough gates and an insane terminal distribution, added to tight connecting times, you really get your adrenaline going just in the run across the airport to make it to your next flight.

Yes, I love Paris enough to perversely enjoy that run across this very French airport, past the cafés with the Illy and croissants, past the ads for the RER, past the TGV station, run, take a whiff, move on.

I am still in transit, suspended between Europe and Madison, though I will be back in town later today, to teach my adorable Torts section. In three days I am off again. No, not across the ocean this time. Maybe, though, I’ll stand by the water’s edge and stare wistfully, with a white hankie fluttering in my hand, sighing deeply, wiping the occasional tear, humming snippets of waltzes and mumbling random German phrases picked up off of menus and overheard at street corners … Maybe.

Vienna: no notes, mostly comments

It seems that at some point in their lives, all major greats from the file of classical composers lived in Vienna: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Strauss, Mahler, and Bruckner – they all spent significant amounts of time here. And aside from Mahler, I love them all.

Did I hear a single strain of music during the three days I was here?

Only from street kids trying to pick up a Euro. Oh, and in the Opera gift shop where I was purchasing, somewhat stupidly, a magnet with a picture of a slice of Sachertorte for my fridge.

I hadn’t planned on attending formal concerts, but I expected to encounter music informally, everywhere – in cafés, out of church doors, in hotel lobbies. None of it – I don't think I heard a single note.

Vienna seems to me to be a quiet kind of city. Maybe people would think it offensive to hear classics as background stuff.

Most certainly, they treat concert performances seriously: I have watched them pour out of the great theater halls late at night after a performance and they all were dressed as if there’s no tomorrow, far more formally than most attending a concert in New York, for example.

But no, I have no post nor photo illustrating my musical encounters. There were none. Amazing, isn’t it?

My nod toward the greats? Okay, here’s Mozart himself playing in the park. Oh, and a dude fishing along the canal, which so many assume is the Danube, because, you know, Vienna and the Danube are supposed to be like pb&j. Follow the canal long enough, and you get to the jam. And to the hills, alive, though not with music. That would be in Salzburg. Next time. Today I’m flying back to the States.








P.S. My parting shots though have to be from the last great moments of food and the full moon that followed us around late at night. Weird, because quite coincidentally, in the days we were here, we depleted the supply of the young white, Weissburgunder: Der Vollmondwein at our favorite eating spot (Wiebels Wirtshaus). Translation of the label: Vienna full moon.



avocado mousse with Austrian goat cheese and baby shrimp



venison over chanterelles with potato cakes



Viennese nights with Der Vollmondwein



chasing the moon



chasing the moon, 2



chasing the Sachertorte (at the Café Sacher)

Here’s to that final slice of Sachertorte. And to the little one back home.

Vienna: where might a Viennese go in the hope of finding a pick-me-up?

The usuals: bars, friends, friends at bars, friends at cafés, friends elsewhere, for a walk.

At some point, oh say 100 years ago, they may have gone here:



The waiting room at Freud’s house on 19 Bergstrasse

I wasn’t really in need of a pick-me-up, but still found it a good place, really an extraordinarily fascinating place to head to on a Sunday morning.

Vienna, like Warsaw, pretty much closes down on Sunday (except for the coffee shops). Yet the people (like in Warsaw) go out in great numbers to parade up and down the main shopping gasse's and strasse's (the park is to the side and does not lend itself to parading up and down. You can dispense with it in an hour or so).

You would think one store at least would seize the competitive advantage and throw open its doors and rake in the Euros, but no. Sunday is Sunday. You eat and you drink and you eat some more. And stroll.



The Havelka: some describe it as Vienna's most bohemian, intellectual, literary, smokey, etc etc cafe.



fewer people, quieter spaces


It seems I ought not strain myself either on a Sunday. And I did not. I kept the camera in its pouch and, apart from the museum visit, I concentrated on strolling. And eating.



chanterelle mushroom salad



plum strudel -- hold the cream, please.


And in the very early morning, I amused myself by taking pictures in the mirror of a neighborhood café.



Cafe Aida

Vienna: afternoon delight

Thinkin' of you workin' up my appetite, looking forward to a little afternoon delight.

Everyone’s doin’ it




Taking the world by sturm: white plastic cups filled with young, fruity, purple liquid. Crowds packing the main square, standing, talking, sampling. The new wine has arrived!


the well-dressed

the casual

the dark-haired young

the white haired older

the white-haired younger

to a new season


Why wait until the middle of a cold dark night.
When everything's a little clearer in the light of day.

But you've got some bait a waitin' and I think I might try nibbling
a little afternoon delight

Eating it up

Of course, it's not all in the drinking. Around the corner, the street foods are there for you and they don't lack crowds. It's all pleasure and indulgence. Looking for low-fat? Not in this neck of the city.




















this calls for the real stuff (after first emptying the tall sturm cups)

My motto's always been; when it's right, it's right ...
With or without whipped cream?

In the end, I want my now very late afternoon coffee. I have it in my mind that the day will not be complete without Austrian apple strudel.
I don’t speak German, but being surrounded by it makes it easy to start picking up words and phrases. Since I got the coffee thing wrong my first day here (too little coffee, too much whipped cream), I thought I’d work with the words on the menu and request something closer to what I wanted: lotsa coffee and lotsa milk.

On the menu I see: kleiner espresso mit milch and
grosser espresso mit schlagobers im glas.

Easy. I tell the waitress:
Grosser espresso but not mit schlagobers im glas; instead, mit milch in glas, danke.

She says (in German): ah. You want a latte.


the cream comes anyway. with the apple strudel.

And you know the night is always gonna be there any way...

Afternoon delights turn into evening pleasure




Vienna at sunset is outrageously beautiful, imposing, regal.
And really, it's time I tasted the traditional Viennese foods, prepared perfectly, with an eye toward freshness. I found what I was looking for.
[Okay, no I did not just look at foods, look at people eating, sit and eat myself, stand and eat, walk and drink and eat, no I did not do that. But it seems that way, doesn't it?]



to start with, a frothy pumpkin soup with pumpkin seeds and pumpkin seed oil



followed by absolutely perfect Weiner schnitzel, updated with greens on scalloped potatotes



ending with poppyseeds. In a white chocolate mousse. with fruit.

Sky rockets, really, this day was all about sky rockets. Completely delightful.